Medical students will soon have a chance to complete some of their training in southwest Florida. Final preparations are underway for the July opening of the Florida State University College of Medicine’s Sarasota campus. The school is community-based...which means it employs local physicians to help train students. Dean Dr. Bruce Berg says the Sarasota campus expands FSU’s so-called “distributed model.”

“That means that medical students go for the 1st two years…which are the basic science years…to Tallahassee proper. The 3rd and 4th year, which are the clinical years where the students really learn how to take care of people…are then accomplished, that is their training is accomplished, in campuses that are around the state. This is the 4th one.”

Berg says 9 students have already been selected to work in Sarasota… and start training in July. They’ll do clinical rotations in family and internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics, surgery and psychiatry. The school will have as many as 40 students in a few years. Dr. Berg also hopes programs like this will help bring doctors to…and keep them in…Florida…by getting them to establish local ties during their hands-on training.

Last year's hurricanes touched nearly every coastal region of the state. Of the 855 miles of sandy coastline in Florida - 322 miles were critically eroded. Estimates put damage to the state's beaches at more than 42 million dollars. Many areas are still cleaning up. Bureau chief for the Department of Environmental Protection's beaches and coastal systems division, Michael Barnett, says his office is still engaged in weekly teleconferences with state and federal agencies.
"It's a cooperative effort to try to provide emergency restoration of several, I think there's 15 different shoreline segments that are under federal jurisdiction for shore protection. These are projects that have previously been constructed and to varying degrees suffered significant damages attributed to one of the four land falling hurricanes."
During a special session last fall, state lawmakers passed a recovery plan totaling almost $70 million for federal shore protection projects and dune restoration. Meanwhile, President Bush plans to slash federal funding for sand replenishment projects. He's requesting $46 million for "shore protection" projects in his 2006 budget -- less than half what Congress provided this year. The President wants to eliminate all federal funding for beach renourishment in Lee and Sarasota counties.

A 24-year-old Florida Gulf Coast University student is the first woman in Southwest Florida to have an ovary removed and frozen-—hoping reproductive technology catches up by the time she’s ready to have children. Amy Tardif explains. 

Quiet is something people expect when they visit the library. But the Charlotte county branch of a group called S-H-H-H – or Self Help for Hard of Hearing People – is using the library to help spread a message about ending silence. Valerie Alker reports. (Audio)

The building of Ave Maria University— and its surrounding town will create a need for construction workers. There are hopes those workers can come from neighboring Immokalee. Ryan Warner reports. Immokalee’s Bethune Education Center is training local residents with just that in mind. Last night, 20 students were the first to graduate from Bethune’s new Building Construction Trades Program. Administrator Dr. Leo Mediavilla says the grads got special training in heating, air conditioning, and ventilation work.

“They’re doing many things right now. Many of them might be migrant farm workers. Many of them could be looking for work. And so our goal was to be able to give them an opportunity to get some self confidence and some training, to learn more about the trades. And also to give them some tools so that when they went to a job site, they would be better equipped to get the job.”

Students underwent about 60 hours of workplace training. The Bethune Education Center is part of the Lorenzo Walker Institute of Technology.

The Census Bureau is changing the way it collects information to give communities yearly access to key socioeconomic data that until now has been available only once a decade. Alexa Elliott reports. (AUDIO)

If someone wants to buy a house today for a million dollars… why would they wait six months from now to buy it for a million and a half? That’s the general idea behind a bill from State Senator Burt Saunders, a Naples Republican. Ryan Warner has more. (AUDIO)

The City of Sanibel is dropping its lawsuit against Lee County - in exchange for an attempt to lower discount tolls on the causeway. The Lee County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved a settlement agreement with Sanibel Tuesday. It ends a more than year-long court battle over construction of a new causeway. Last November, County officials doubled general tolls on the causeway from 3 to 6-dollars…and raised the discount toll from 50 cents to $3. They claim delays caused by litigation drove up construction costs. Tuesday’s settlement hinged on Lee County agreeing to devote its share of surplus toll revenues to construction costs. The City of Sanibel recently voted to do the same. Lee County Commissioner – Bob Janes – whose district includes Sanibel – says the agreement aims to reduce construction costs, and therefore tolls.

“What both sides are shooting at is a 30 percent reduction in the tolls. Now bear in mind that’s not a firm figure…and the reason for that is because we don’t quite know what the reduction will be…and we can’t place ourself in a position of saying we’re going to reduce the tolls 30 percent and we’re only able to reduce them 29 percent for example…because that would open up a whole new range of discussions and argumentations and things like that.”

Janes says any reduction wouldn’t take effect until November…and the final amount will be based on final construction costs. He adds now that the lawsuit’s been settled, County officials can pursue permanent funding for causeway construction. Commissioners also unanimously approved a plan for variable pricing on the causeway. Lee County Commissioner John Albion says variable tolls would encourage businesses to help relieve traffic by allowing employees to arrive at off-peak times.

“I hope that there’s going to be an effort towards understanding flex-time…that the employer can really help out the employee by trying to give the employee the opportunity to arrive at work and leave work at times that they can get the discount. It also will be set up, if it does go forward, at times when there’s greater ability for the roads to handle traffic. Which is what the whole concept is…and it’s worked very well in Cape Coral and the Fort Myers side for those people who use those bridges.”

Albion says variable tolls would help relieve pressure on both Periwinkle Avenue on Sanibel and Summerlin Road in Fort Myers.

Three candidates in favor of several amendments were elected to the Sanibel City Council Tuesday. And those amendments, limiting the island’s development, also passed. Wendy Humphrey reports. (AUDIO)

Citrus canker has apparently moved from Cape Coral into North Fort Myers. The microscopic bacterial disease is considered a grave threat to Florida’s more than $9 billion citrus industry. Spokesman for the state’s citrus canker eradication program - Mark Fagan – says the find isn’t a surprise. He characterizes it as “a jump across the street.”

“Citrus canker did cross the street into North Fort Myers at the Tamiami Village Mobile Home Community…and that’s the only place we’ve found it so far in NFM…and we really don’t expect to find it, at least widely spread, in this area.”

Fagan says the most likely scenario is that Hurricane Charley’s winds blew it from the Cape to North Fort Myers. Scientists believe citrus canker arrived in Florida in the early to mid 90s…most likely by man—into the Miami area from South America. It’s now around the state…mostly in the east and southeast…but it’s also turned up in Sarasota, Charlotte, Lee and Collier Counties. Fagan says storms like Charley make his agency’s job harder …but delays in eradication efforts allowed it to be spread by MAN.

“The series of court challenges that began back in the Fall of 2000 and really didn’t conclude until February of 2004…is what allowed the disease to spread from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County elsewhere around the state. All the introductions elsewhere around the state were introductions or movement by man, it wasn’t nature.”

That court decision allows canker eradication crews to destroy all infected trees, and those within 19-hundred feet. Since Hurricane Charley – crews have found more than a million acres of citrus trees that had to be destroyed because of infection—or proximity to it. Symptoms of canker appear on the leaves of citrus trees… and include raised lesions with a yellowish halo on both sides.